Norman Baker: I am pleased that my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), has introduced the Bill, and I congratulate him on its progress to date. It will help to tackle the abuse that seriously threatens the value of the blue badge scheme for disabled people. The Government have long understood the need to reform the disabled parking scheme. Very few changes have been made to it since it was established in the 1970s. It is a crucial service for promoting improved mobility for disabled people; 75% of badge holders say that, without it, they would go out less often.
	Since this Government came to power, my officials and I have been working with badge holders, disability groups and local authorities to deliver improvements. To ensure that badges are issued more fairly and consistently across the country, I introduced independent mobility assessments to help to determine eligibility. The provision in my hon. Friend’s Bill enabling members of the armed forces communities overseas to apply for a badge is also about fairness, of course, and it complements the Department’s reforms.
	More recently, on 1 January this year, I introduced on behalf of the Government the blue badge improvement service. This is a major initiative aimed at tackling rising levels of fraud and abuse, while helping to ensure that disabled people receive improved customer service. It provides for online applications and provides local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales with a single national database of all blue badge holders and their key details, thereby preventing multiple and fraudulent applications.
	Importantly, enforcement officers can also run quick validity checks via their hand-held devices, before taking the appropriate enforcement action. This new tool is a major step forward in tackling fraud. The powers in the Bill to allow inspections in plain clothes and the recovery of badges mean that, when an enforcement officer has checked the status of a badge on the central system, he or she will be able to take it off the street immediately if it is being misused.
	Furthermore, since the improvement service went live, we have added a facility for members of the public to report lost and stolen badges. The Bill enhances that facility by enabling local authorities legally to cancel badges that are no longer in the holder’s possession. That will put the status of such badges beyond doubt. To help to counteract fraud, we have also introduced a new badge design that is harder to copy, forge or alter. The old-style cardboard badges have been replaced by new ones made from a hard plastic material which
	contains a number of overt and covert security features, as used in banknotes and driving licences.
	The Bill will enhance that development by removing the requirement to prescribe the badge details in regulations. To disclose the high-security features of the badge would play directly into the hands of those who seek to make forgeries for their own gain. That will happen, however. People are already attempting to make copies of the new badge. I am pleased to say they are bad copies, but even so, we do not want to help the criminals by publishing badge security details.
	Public consultation has demonstrated widespread support for the measures contained in my hon. Friend’s Bill, which are long overdue. I know that the Bill has cross-party support. I am sure that hon. Members will have received representations from disabled constituents, as I have, complaining about abuse of the blue badge scheme and the impact that it has on their lives.
	I want to deal with the points that have been raised. I should clarify that badge holders will still have recourse to an appeal and review procedure. That is not being taken away. The difference will be that it will involve the local authority and then the ombudsman. The ombudsman service is free to users and has the expertise to deal with more than 10,000 complaints a year.
	The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) referred to bus journeys, a subject that is some distance away from the Bill’s contents. I note, however, that the number of bus journeys undertaken over the past 12 months is on a par with the number undertaken in the previous year and in the year before that. There has not been the reduction in bus travel that she implied. We fully accept the importance of the independence of travel. That is why my officials in the Department and I are taking forward a new accessibility
	strategy to enhance that need and right. We are consulting widely with disabled groups, which have been participating in the construction and formulation of that strategy. I can therefore assure the hon. Lady that they are fully involved in the Department’s processes.
	In regard to the questions about disabled persons tax credit, the answer that I gave at the Dispatch Box recently was that a consultation has been initiated on what should or should not happen to DPTC and on any successor arrangements. We will make a statement in due course on what we conclude as a result of the responses to the consultation. I am sure that the hon. Lady would want us to give full weight to those responses and to analyse them properly, rather than rushing into a precipitate decision. I can assure her that the Bill will have no impact on local authority resources. I hope that that puts her mind at rest.
	There is a consultation process under way on the personal independence payment, but the Government’s preferred option is one of minimum change. It is not in any way our intention to reduce the number of people who qualify for a badge. The consultation has been necessitated by the changes to the nature of benefits being brought in by the Department for Work and Pensions, but so far as the Department for Transport is concerned, we want the result of any consequential changes to stay as close as possible to the current arrangements. That is our preferred option, but obviously we will look at the responses to the consultation.
	We believe that the Bill will help disabled people. It will help to fill the gaps and it will complement the Government’s own legislation. It will be an asset for those who rely on the scheme for independent living, and the Government fully support it.
	Question put and agreed  to .
	Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.